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Vice President Upon meeting Shelby Homer, Board Vice President, 4 Corners K9 Search And Rescue (4CK9SAR), you will immediately sense her love for humanity and for animals. She has a special passion and talent for training dogs for Search And Rescue and for Human Remains Detection. Shelby was born and raised in New Mexico and relocated to Mission, South Dakota in 2017, where she owns Bullhead Cattle Ranch. “I have been around animals my entire life and in High School I dreamt of being a Vet Tech.” Shelby attended San Juan College on two separate occasions, and changed majors from Criminal Justice to Vet Tech and is in the process of earning her Associate Degree in Vet Tech.
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As a Cattle Rancher since 2019, Shelby owns a herd of cattle, along with numerous horses, dogs, and chickens. Her German Shepherd, Sunka, is a Search And Rescue Canine and Keyah, a Dutch Shepherd is being trained in Human Remains Detection. During the spring of 2016, when Shelby was living in Farmington, New Mexico, she enrolled Sunka, her 12-week-old female German Shephard puppy in obedience class. There, she met Bernadine Beyale, Founder/Executive Director of 4CK9SAR, who enrolled her 12-week-old male German Shepherd puppy in obedience class. Through their discussions, they determined that Sunka and Trigger were from the same litter—brother and sister—hard to believe! Immediately, Shelby and Bernadine formed an amazing friendship and admiration for each other’s compassion to help others.
In 2021, as Shelby was living in South Dakota, she and Bernadine went on a Search and Rescue deployment together in Farmington, to search for an elderly woman who had been missing for two weeks. During this Search And Rescue mission, they discovered their mutual passion to provide a resource to the Indigenous Community, which at the time, did not exist. “We began planning and strategizing in October of 2021 and discussing how to launch a nonprofit to serve this community. During March of 2022, we received our 501c3 designation as 4CK9SAR.”
Although Shelby is not onsite in New Mexico, she is involved in the operations, documentation, and certification process for both the SAR Handlers and the SAR Canines. Shelby has earned 6 Certifications encompassing Search And Rescue, CPR and First Aid. “It is important to both Bernadine and I, that everyone on our team is properly trained and certified by the National Association of Search And Rescue (NASAR).” There are costs associated with each Certification and 4CK9SAR pays for the fees for each Volunteer. Currently there are 8 Volunteers, and their extensive training ensures that the team is equipped to instinctively react when searching for those who are missing, lost, or injured.
As Shelby Homer and Bernadine Beyale have emerged from wanting to build a team based on integrity and love for the community to actually building such a team, they are proud of their accomplishment in under 2 years. “Indigenous Search And Rescue teams are rare. We need to raise up more Indigenous SAR Teams and that is one of my goals in the next 2 years. I will always support Indigenous Communities, as that is home for me.” Shelby is driven and committed to all levels of dog training and is launching a Dog Training Facility in May of 2024, with the focus on training canines for detection work. Her passion is infectious as she encourages and motivates others to get involved and connect on an emotional level. As Shelby likes to say, “Build a team so strong, that they don’t know who the leader is!”